An Introduction To Passion

When you love history, what is it about history that you love? Is it the romantic aspects, the possibilities of personal interaction so long ago lost to the past that captures your imagination and spins stories through your head? Is it the physical aspects, the artifacts found by archaeologists and populating museums throughout the world, things you can see and (if you're lucky) touch?

I got interested in anthropology through a combination of all of these and more. When I was growing up, we spent a lot of time in museums because I was homeschooled and my mom believed strongly in experiencing that which you were learning about. I remember being drawn in and fascinated by anything older than a few hundred years. The sense of human history that hangs about a museum has always been palpable to me, and it was a siren's song. While other kids were checking out the dinosaurs, I would hunt for the mesoamerican or paleolithic exibits and spend hours reading the descriptions and imagining what life must have been like in those times.

For a long time, I thought that I would be an Egyptologist, as that time period sucked me in like no other. But as my schooling went on, and I eventually got my GED and moved on to community college, I found that a broader scope was so much more fascinating. When asked to declare a major, the choice seemed obvious. I chose Anthropology, and I've never looked back.

My love affair with anthropology has only deepened through the years of college study. Passion has guided me through difficult (grueling in some cases) courses in other subjects, because they were required for my major. I've learned that I will do whatever it takes to gain the knowledge I need to see more and feel more of the human history that steeps this world. Physical anthropology - the little biological details that separate the human animal from the non-human animals and other primates. Cultural anthropology - the nuances and social norms that define our incredibly complex social interactions world wide. Archaeology - the search for physical evidence of our human past, artifacts and the like (no, this is NOT Indiana Jones - he's a very poor archaeologist, though not a bad professor!) for display in museums and study by other anthropologists and scientists. Finally, Linguistics is also a branch of anthropology! The study and comparison of human language shows how our intelligence has evolved and branched out over the thousands of years we have dominated the planet.

It's all of these things and more that drew me and continue to draw me into anthropology. We as a species are the most complex and wide-ranging creatures we know of, and yet there are species that we know more about than we do about our own history! These are the gaps that anthropologists seek to fill in, and what I spend my life studying.

"But Lynne," I can hear you asking. "You work in the marketing department of a publishing and ghostwriting company. What does that have to do with anthropology?" And you know, a few years ago, I'd wonder the same thing - but something I've learned thanks to my association with my now partner and wife, Kaitlyn, is that the stories that people hold in their heads, be they fiction or non-fiction, have just as much to do with human history as the artifacts I was fascinated by in museums all those years ago. Anthropology is a very wide scope! It takes us from the worldwide, to the personal. From the ancient to the modern. If it's human in origin, then it has to do with anthropology - the study of human beings!

Writing is about anthropology on a personal level. A person's history is a memoir, a company's business politics is a wonderful example of cultural and social anthropology. So many people have books in them, whether they realize it or not - interacting with these people through my post as a marketing intern is just another way for me to take my anthropological knowledge out of the classroom and apply it to something real and tangible in my own life!

So the answer to the question is that I work where I do, rather than in a museum or the like, because here and only here can I receive personal, hands-on experience with the human condition. Dealing with clients, speaking to foundations and cultivating interpersonal relationships with all of these wonderful people has taught me as much if not more about anthropology than I had already learned through the classroom. Every day I learn more, sometimes from sources that you would never expect!

Anthropology is about humanity. Humanity is about learning experiences. I am proud to call myself a human being, and an Anthropologist.